Search Google Appliance

Domestic Furnishings

Washboards, armchairs, lamps, and pots and pans may not seem to be museum pieces. But they are invaluable evidence of how most people lived day to day, last week or three centuries ago. The Museum's collections of domestic furnishings comprise more than 40,000 artifacts from American households. Large and small, they include four houses, roughly 800 pieces of furniture, fireplace equipment, spinning wheels, ceramics and glass, family portraits, and much more.

The Arthur and Edna Greenwood Collection contains more than 2,000 objects from New England households from colonial times to mid-1800s. From kitchens of the past, the collections hold some 3,300 artifacts, ranging from refrigerators to spatulas. The lighting devices alone number roughly 3,000 lamps, candleholders, and lanterns.

Small, bail-handled, raised and pierced circular basket on pierced circular footring. Cast and applied, four serpentine-lobed gadrooned rim with ruffled shells and small oval bosses. Spiral piercework design consists of eight alternating panels of scrollwork and circles separated by shallow S-curve lines of graduated beads. Handle has an oblong panel at bow and tapered ends. Four hallmarks struck on well underside: "W·T" in raised roman letters in a rounded rectangle, the raised gothic or Old English letter "N" in a clipped-corner shield, lion passant guardant in clipped-corner rectangle, and crowned leopard's head in round-bottom shield.

Handleless, raised, circular bowl with a crenelated top edge on a domed and stepped circular foot. Applied cast rim features eight ribbed notches separated by eight pairs of C-scrolls with a wavy-haired putti's mask at their centers. Eight, chased and repousse volutes of overlapping pairs of leaves on bowl form spiraling panels with pendant acanthus. Two panels opposite one another are engraved with armorial devices, one with the Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom and the other with those of Egerton, consisting of two collared and chained wolves supporting a shield-shaped escutcheon with quartered coat of arms, the first and fourth Barry of eight with cross flory sable and the second and third Azure with three laurel leaves, a collared and chained wolf passant crest and the motto "FRANGAS NON FLECTES". Three hallmarks to upper left of Royal arms, the raised gothic or Old English letter "K" in shield, lion passant guardant in shield, and crowned leopard's head in round-bottom shield; cast rim applied over maker's mark. Underside of rounded bottom struck with an incuse five-arm or -petal motif; centerpoint visible.`

Small, bail-handled, raised and pierced oval basket on cast openwork oval ring of ruffled S scrolls and flowers with four C-scroll feet. Applied cast rim of intertwined reverse C scrolls and a garland of trailing flowers. Piercework design consists of eight panels separated by vertical ribs alternating between two of scrollwork and two of crosslets. Hinged, openwork handle has reverse C scrolls connected by flowers with a flower at bow. Inside bottom is engraved with a crest of a falcon on heraldic wreath. Basket interior struck below one handle with four hallmarks, a lion passant guardant in clipped-corner shield, "W·P" in raised roman letters in indented rectangle, crowned leopard's head in round-bottom shield, and the raised gothic or Old English letter "I" or "L" in a surround.

Large circular dish having a slightly domed well and plain-edged rim engraved on front with the inscription "The Gift of the Hon:\ble THOMAS HANCOCK ESQ:\R to the CHURCH in Brattle Street Boston 1764." in script and shaded roman letters. Asymmetrical cartouche at top center of rim contains an armorial device for Hancock, consisting of a griffin rampant crest, its wings displayed and fire issuing from its mouth, above a coat of arms Gules (vertical lines), dexter hand couped argent, and on chief argent, three fighting cocks gules; bottom center has a four-winged cherub flanked by flowing fronds. Reverse of well struck once under centerpoint "J.COBURN" in roman letters in a rectangle; partially legible incised marks "N\o (??) w\t 25-\oz".

Eve Van Cortlandt's fine white linen quilted counterpane is one of the earliest dated American quilts in existence. The date, "1760" and her initials, "E V C," are embroidered in blue silk cross-stitch on the quilt lining. Quilted with white linen thread, a delicate pattern of flowers, feathery stems, and low open baskets surround a central quatrefoil medallion. The design is set off by a background of quilted parallel lines just one-eighth inch apart.

Eve was born on May 22, 1736, to Frederick Van Cortlandt and Francena Jay each from families of wealthy and prominent New York landowners. She made her quilt for her dower chest while living in the family home. In 1761, Eve married the Honorable Henry White, a businessman and a member of the King’s Council of the Royal Colony of New York. He became president of the New York Chamber of Commerce in 1772 and remained loyal to the King of England during the Revolution.

When the British evacuated New York in 1783, Henry moved his family to England. Henry White died in London in 1786, and Eve returned to America as a widow, most likely to be near two of her children who lived in New York. Of their five children, two sons were in the British service and remained in London, as did one daughter. Eve died in 1836 at the age of one hundred, having witnessed a century of historic events. Since 1897, the family home in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx has been a museum.

The earliest domestic clocks in the American colonies were English-made "lantern" clocks, with brass gear trains held between pillars. Along with fully furnished "best" beds, looking glasses, sofas, silver, and case furniture, such clocks were the household objects consistently assigned the highest monetary value in inventories of possessions.

By the 18th century, the most common style of domestic clock came to look more like a piece of household furniture. A wooden case enclosed the movement, weights, and pendulum. Through a glass window the dial was visible.

In 1769, Pennsylvania clockmaker and millwright Joseph Ellicott completed this complicated tall case clock. On three separate dials, it tells the time and shows the phases of the moon; depicts on an orrery the motions of the sun, moon, and planets; and plays selected twenty-four musical tunes on the hour.

The musical dial on the Ellicott clock allows the listener to choose from twelve pairs of tunes. Each pair includes a short tune and a long one. On the hour only the short tune plays, but every third hour, both play. During a tune, automaton figures at the top of the dial appear to tap their feet in time to the music, and a small dog between them jumps up and down.

Joseph Ellicott moved from the Philadelphia area to Maryland in 1772 and, with his brothers Andrew and John, set up a flour-milling operation in what is now Ellicott City. The clock was a centerpiece in Ellicott family homes for generations.

Who else owned clocks in early America? Clock owners, like the American colonists themselves, were not a homogeneous group. Where a person lived influenced the probability of owning a timepiece. In 1774, for example, New Englanders and Middle Atlantic colonials were equally likely to own a timepiece. In those regions, roughly 13 or 14 adults out of 100 had a clock in their possessions when they died. Among Southern colonists at that time, only about 6 in 100 had a clock.

This plate is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychoanalysis and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.

The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in the German States, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.

The plate has overglaze enamel painting of a floral spray and scattered flowers in the naturalistic style. European flowers began to appear on Meissen porcelain in about 1740 as the demand for Far Eastern patterns became less dominant and more high quality printed sources became available in conjunction with growing interest in the scientific study of flora and fauna. For the earlier style of German flowers (deutsche Blumen) Meissen painters referred to Johann Wilhelm Weinmann’s publication, the Phytantoza Iconographia (Nuremberg 1737-1745), in which many of the plates were engraved after drawings by the outstanding botanical illustrator Georg Dionys Ehret (1708-1770). The more formally correct German flowers were superseded by mannered flowers (manier Blumen), depicted in a looser and somewhat overblown style based on the work of still-life flower painters and interior designers like Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer (1636-1699) and Louis Tessier (1719?-1781), later referred to as “naturalistic” flowers.

The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Flower and fruit painters were paid less than workers who specialized in figures and landscapes, and most painters received pay by the piece rather than a regular wage. Gold painting and polishing was the work of another division of specialists. In the late eighteenth century flower painters were even busier and consumer taste for floral decoration on domestic “china” has endured into our own time, but with the exception of a manufactory like Meissen most floral patterns are now applied by transfers and are not hand-painted directly onto the porcelain.

The rim of the plate has a shallow relief pattern with a trellis and diaper design known as the old Brandenstein (Alt Brandenstein) named for Friedrich August von Brandenstein, who in 1739 took the position of chief master of the kitchen at the Saxon court. Following the appointment to the manufactory in 1733 of court sculptor Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775) modeling techniques became more sophisticated. The process of creating shallow relief patterns was laborious and required considerable skill. The sources for designs in relief came from pattern books and engravings, especially those by the French designer Jean Bérain the Elder (1638-1711), and the Nuremberg designer Paul Decker (1677-1713) among many others. These designs were applied in architecture, interior stucco work and wood carving, furniture, wall coverings, and ceramics. The “old Brandenstein” pattern was first recorded at Meissen in Johann Friedrich Eberlein’s (1695-1749) work report of 1741.

Jonathan Copp was born on June 12, 1694, and married Mrs. Sarah (Dennis) Hobart as his second wife on June 30, 1742, in Stonington, Connecticut. Their daughter Esther was born on October 23, 1754, in New London, Connecticut, and she never married. She died September 21, 1829. (See sampler by Phebe Esther Copp, her grandniece. A tree, rose bush, and one text are the same on both samplers.) Esther's sampler is part of an extensive collection of 18th- and 19th- century household textiles, costume items, furniture, and other pieces belonging to the Copps, a prosperous but frugal Connecticut family. The collection was donated to the United State National Museum in the 1890s by John Brenton Copp, offering the nation the opportunity to preserve and study the everyday possessions of a New England family.

This figure group is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.

The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in Germany, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.

The figure group, possibly modeled by Friedrich Elias Meyer (1724-1785), represents the revels in honor of the Greek god Dionysis or the Roman Bacchus, and follows the Rococo style of representation epitomized by the French painter François Boucher. The man seated on the donkey, or an ass, represents the drunken Silenus prevented by Bacchus from falling off his mount in a stupor. A bacchante reclines at Bacchus’s feet with a basket full of grapes.

The Renaissance humanist tradition was still active in early eighteenth-century court culture, and the Meissen manufactory produced a large number of mythological and allegorical subjects featured in other branches of the visual arts and in the elaborate court entertainments, festivals and processions that took place in Dresden. This model is listed in the 1773 inventory of confectionary items and was likely used for decorative display on the dessert table (see Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgeoisie 1710-1815, p. 345).

Meissen figures and figure groups are usually sculpted in special modeling clay and then cut carefully into separate pieces from which individual molds are made. Porcelain clay is then pressed into the molds and the whole figure or group reassembled to its original form, a process requiring great care and skill. The piece is then dried thoroughly before firing in the kiln. In the production of complex figure groups the work is arduous and requires the making of many molds from the original model.

The group is painted in overglaze enamel colors and gold.

On the modeling and molding process still practiced today at Meissen see Alfred Ziffer, “‘…skillfully made ready for moulding…’ The Work of Johann Joachim Kaendler” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgeoisie 1710-1815, pp. 61-67.

On court festivals see Watanabe O’Kelly, H., 2002, Court Culture in Dresden: From Renaissance to Baroque

This figure is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.

The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in Germany, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.

This figure, modeled by Kaendler, represents a female harlequin from the ‘putti in disguise’ series. Her wings have broken off. The Meissen cupids, the ‘costumed cupids’ or putti in disguise, represent a large group of about eighty figures modeled by Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775) in the 1750s and remodeled by Michel Victor Acier (1736-1799) after the Seven Years War in 1764. Usually, but not always, identified by the presence of wings on their backs, cupids represent many of the trades and artisanal activities, the Italian Comedy characters, allegorical and emblematic themes.

Meissen figures and figure groups are usually sculpted in special modeling clay and then cut carefully into separate pieces from which individual molds are made. Porcelain clay is then pressed into the molds and the whole figure or group reassembled to its original form, a process requiring great care and skill. The piece is then dried thoroughly before firing in the kiln. In the production of complex figure groups the work is arduous and requires the making of many molds from the original model.

On the modeling and molding process still practiced today at Meissen see Alfred Ziffer, “‘…skillfully made ready for moulding…’ The Work of Johann Joachim Kaendler” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgeoisie 1710-1815, pp.61-67.